US nuclear safety claim is a ‘dangerous fantasy’ | Science Blog

In their paper, How US strategic antimissile defense could be made to work, George Lewis and Theodore Postol argue that the US should replace the ineffective, untested, and unworkable Ground-Based Missile Systems (GMDs) with a defense that could reliably intercept Iranian and North Korean long-range ballistic missiles before they reach the United States, Northern and Western Europe, and Northern Russia.

The alternative defense would use stealth drones carrying specialized fast interceptors to take down the nuclear-armed long-range ballistic missiles while they are still in powered flight and before they can deploy effective countermeasures.

Since a drone-based system would use a relatively small number of interceptors, it would not threaten Russia’s strategic nuclear forces in a manner that would create policy concerns relating to New START or other future arms reduction agreements. New START is a treaty signed earlier this year by President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev limiting nuclear weapons. Both countries will be limited to 1,550 ready-to-use, long-range nuclear weapons in addition to the other parts of their nuclear stockpile.

The current GMD and SM-3 systems have fundamental flaws determined by the laws of physics that cannot be overcome, based on technology they both share.

These flaws relate to their ability to accurately target the correct part of the target missile in flight. Newly developed Iranian missiles without tail fins, or warheads attached to rocket bodies that tumble end over end, like those that defeated the Patriot Missile Defense in the Gulf War of 1991, would easily beat these interceptors before they could locate, manoeuvre, and hit the nuclear warhead.

Decoys deployed in the near vacuum of space would also defeat the defense. These decoys will travel along with warheads because there is no air-drag to cause them to slow down. Since the defense would not be able to identify the warheads among the decoys, it would not know how to aim its interceptors.

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